The ADATA GAMMIX S50 Lite 2TB SSD Review: Mainstream PCIe Gen4
by Billy Tallis on April 30, 2021 8:00 AM ESTBurst IO Performance
Our burst IO tests operate at queue depth 1 and perform several short data transfers interspersed with idle time. The random read and write tests consist of 32 bursts of up to 64MB each. The sequential read and write tests use eight bursts of up to 128MB each. For more details, please see the overview of our 2021 Consumer SSD Benchmark Suite.
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The ADATA XPG Gammix S50 Lite performs well on most of the burst IO tests, especially when the test is confined to a narrow range of the drive so that it won't overflow the SLC and DRAM caches. When the test ranges over 80% of the drive, the S50 Lite's write speeds are much lower (due to less available SLC cache) and the random read performance is also a bit lower (due to insufficient DRAM).
Sustained IO Performance
Our sustained IO tests exercise a range of queue depths and transfer more data than the burst IO tests, but still have limits to keep the duration somewhat realistic. The primary scores we report are focused on the low queue depths that make up the bulk of consumer storage workloads. For more details, please see the overview of our 2021 Consumer SSD Benchmark Suite.
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Adding in some slightly higher queue depths and longer test durations doesn't substantially change how the S50 Lite ranks. Its peak performance is still competitive with the best PCIe Gen3 drives, but as the drive fills up and the locality of the workload drops, it loses more performance than those 8-channel Gen3 drives with the full amount of DRAM.
The power efficiency score on these tests generally look better for the S50 Lite than the energy usage scores from the ATSB tests. Its efficiency is generally at least middle-of-the-road except in the situations where performance starts seriously dropping.
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Looking across the full range of queue depths shows the same performance patterns for the S50 Lite continuing and amplifying. Except on the sequential read test, the S50 Lite shows huge performance disparities between the narrow 32GB range test runs and those that cover 80% of the drive. The lower DRAM ratio is a handicap on the random read test, and the SLC cache often overflows when testing writes against an 80% full drive. But when the tests are only covering a small slice of the drive, the S50 Lite shows good performance scaling that is comparable to the best gen3 drives.
Random Read Latency
This test illustrates how drives with higher throughput don't always offer better IO latency and Quality of Service (QoS), and that latency often gets much worse when a drive is pushed to its limits. This test is more intense than real-world consumer workloads and the results can be a bit noisy, but large differences that show up clearly on a log scale plot are meaningful. For more details, please see the overview of our 2021 Consumer SSD Benchmark Suite.
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The ADATA S50 Lite starts out with decent random read latency at low loads, but the 99th percentile latencies climb quite a bit during the early part of the test. The S50 Lite ultimately fails to make it to the high IOPS range we expect from such a drive, and instead loses control of its latency around 150k IOPS—behavior that's more fitting of a QLC drive.
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utmode - Sunday, May 2, 2021 - link
@Billy Tallis, is there any recent research done on data retention on QLC drive. Electrons are very naughty at staying at a set voltage.Billy Tallis - Sunday, May 2, 2021 - link
Write endurance limits are set based on how much you can wear out the flash and still have one year of unpowered data retention (or three months for enterprise drives). That's still largely determined with high-temperature accelerated testing, but it's pretty well understood how to do that properly.bansheexyz - Saturday, May 1, 2021 - link
Can we ban this idiot already? A 10TB QLC drive will have a larger write endurance than a 2TB TLC drive does today. There is nothing inherently wrong with QLC tech, its supposedly inferior write endurance is self-mitigating by the fact that there are more cells to spread writes across. Which is exactly why TLC overtook MLC, and MLC overtook SLC. Go the frick away.GeoffreyA - Sunday, May 2, 2021 - link
Not a fan of freedom of speech/expression/press? Especially when it comes to these money-driven corporations, one needs to put whatever they do under a microscope and pay little heed to their words.There's nothing wrong with QLC. It's a product with a place: supposedly, bigger size and cheaper price. (Concerning endurance, if the ratings are true and not made up, they ought to be fine for most people.) But as far as I can see, QLC isn't *that* much cheaper than TLC. About 15-20% or something to that effect. Costly to make, greed, the pandemic, or all three?
futrtrubl - Sunday, May 2, 2021 - link
That's pretty much what it should be. QLC holds about 33% more than TLC, or, for the same amount of storage QLC uses 25% fewer cells. It's a less mature tech so I wouldn't expect it to get the full 25% savings, and all the other common components will reduce savings too.MFinn3333 - Sunday, May 2, 2021 - link
It is 50% more, not 33%.If you look at the total number states of a TLC which is 8 or 3 bit cells versus a QLC which is 16 states or 4 bit cells.
Billy Tallis - Sunday, May 2, 2021 - link
Voltage states are an enumeration of possibilities; they do not occupy physical space and are not the correct quantity to compare when discussing storage capacity.FunBunny2 - Monday, May 3, 2021 - link
"Voltage states are an enumeration of possibilities; they do not occupy physical space"well... would you deny that a larger cell, i.e. one with more atoms, is more capable of storing more distinct voltages with some delta of accuracy? not to mention the whole endurance thingee. IOW, as an applied physics problem, QLC is closer to the razor's edge of performance than lower xLC cells. were all this not true, then manufacturers have been wasting gobs and gobs of moolah to implement stacks of 'olde' larger node NAND for TLC and QLC.
Tamdrik - Sunday, May 2, 2021 - link
But most people don't measure their storage devices by how many different states they can maintain-- they measure them by how many bits (or xxx-bytes) they can store. By that (standard) measure, futrtrubl is correct in that a QLC drive holds 33% more data than a TLC drive with the same number of cells (4 bits per cell vs. 3 bits per cell), and if costs are the same per cell, would be expected to cost 25% less for a given capacity (e.g., 1 TB).Oxford Guy - Sunday, May 9, 2021 - link
'But most people don't measure their storage devices by how many different states they can maintain-- they measure them by how many bits (or xxx-bytes) they can store.'You really think that's a logically-sound rebuttal?